Diameter-dependant thermal conductance models of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotube (CNT) bundle is a promising candidate for future electrothermal applications due to its superior thermal properties. A realistic CNT bundle is a mixture of single-wall/multi-wall CNTs due to the nature of bottom-up fabrication process. In order to utilize CNT bundle, its thermal performance analysis needs to be carried out considering both types of CNTs. In this paper, accurate thermal conductance models are introduced for CNTs and mixed CNT bundles considering the influence of diameter and other structure factors. The thermal performance estimation based on these models match the recent measurement results. Considering realistic CNT densities and geometries, the mixed bundle shows 2-3 times improvement over the copper wire counterpart in terms of thermal conductance.